All seems to have been forgiven

All seems to have been forgiven. I am back in the good books again. Well, it is a long climb back to respectability. I set off up the icy mountain again. At any moment, you can slip and fall off a ledge again. It is a precarious existence. “Women have been warned that relieving themselves on Scotland’s mountains could cost them their lives. Heather Morning, the Mountaineering Council of Scotland’s safety officer, said one of her friends who needed the lavatory found herself sliding off a hill with her trousers around her ankles.” A horrifying story but, yes, this is how life is. You just take a moment for a quick slash, and next thing you know you are sliding from the top of a mountain all the way to the bottom.

I want to travel in ice and high mountains again

I want to travel in ice and high mountains again; I want to set sail on stormy seas, and leave this safe port that has made me so soft; I want to sail once more through narrow channels between sheer rock cliff faces like Jason & the Argonauts, with the risk of being crushed at any second. Danger is my middle name. I thrive on danger. I thrive on danger, and masturbation. These are my fuel. Funnily enough just a little bit of research shows there are quite a few strip clubs in Munich—or tabledance clubs, that dread, dead expression—all within quite easy walking distance of the Hauptbahnhof and the Intercity Hotel, not just Atlantic City in Schillerstraße and Sexyland in Goethestraße; but I don’t think I will bother, still. I like things to be really close to me, so it is easy and convenient and Atlantic City and Sexyland are just so easy to cross the road and stroll across to, across all those cris-crossing tram tracks. How hard it is for an Englishman to step on tram tracks and not constantly think they are live! How many Europeans must come to England and electrocute themselves on tube or train tracks as they are so used to tracks that are not live! How many Europeans who stand waiting for the green man before crossing a road even if no traffic is coming must be absolutely shocked and horrified when they come to London and see how people just plunge into the hellish traffic and expect it to brake and swerve and avoid them!

Still the temptation to throw myself into the void remains

Still the temptation to throw myself into the void remains. To touch the void. I need to be on the edge: of loneliness, shame, misery, humiliation, despair. I have blotted my copybook.

 

You can settle down to married life and settle down to not travelling anymore in ice and high mountains

You can settle down to married life, and settle down to not travelling anymore, in ice and high mountains, and settle down to not going to strip clubs, and prostitutes, and adult cinemas anymore; but then you might be tempted to feel you have settled down to slippers and a blanket over your knees, you have settled down to your coffin. Some people are not cut out for married life, as curative as it is for your soul and your spirit. Oh but how totally bored and miserable I was for four days in Vienna—Vienna! capital of Viennese Eroticism! city of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Karl Kraus! Not one single full erection in the entire duration of my stay no matter how hard I tried. How totally bored and miserable I was on the two day trip to Brussels and Cologne the year before! Again not one single full erection during the entire duration. You carry the weather with you. I am sad to have left her behind. From the moment my door closes behind me I am sad to be leaving her behind.

Luxuriate in your shame and embarrassment; gorge on it like a mother eating her own placenta

Luxuriate in your shame, and embarrassment; gorge on it like a mother eating her own placenta. I wanted this to happen; I provoked this humiliation with my wildness, my love of drama and storm. Do more, and more! Delight in my provocations. Now may be the perfect time to travel again—how I yearn for the Intercity now. Insouciance is my middle name. Disappear when they think you surrounded; reappear in their midst splashing them with your waves when they have forgotten all about you. The Cocteau way. Provoke, provoke, throw more bombs, throw more stones in the pond. I need to be on Eurostar at St Pancras, I am breathless for it. Pulling in to Brussels Gare du Midi and straight on to train to Nuremberg and Munich. After a day or so, on to Berlin. Live wilder. Already I feel more alive. This is what humiliation does for me. I feel the electricity prickling on my skin. I am feeding off my humiliation, I want more and more of it. Throw more at me, and I will gorge on it, laughing as I destroy all that is most holy.

Munchen is the town of Von Stuck. I feel small, and squeezed tight, shrivelled like a prune

“Munchen is the town of Von Stuck. I feel small, and squeezed tight, shrivelled like a prune. The Intercity was built in the 1870s in fine jugendstil style but was blown to bits in World War II. The same for the Europaischer Hof. Oh god. Mein Gott, I can’t wait to get back there now. To lose myself in the jugendstil memories of the Intercity. In Von Stuck’s Salome and Die Sunde. In Henrietta Hardenberg. There are just tiny minimalist modernist touches that are traces of the Intercity’s 1870 jugendstil past. The curling silver lampstands. The globe lamps. I hate it when things go wrong. When everything feels soured. The only thing that can make me feel better, then, is the misfortune of others. I feel better for opening my heart to people, to show them how upset I was feeling. I draw positivity from that. It is good to show one’s vulnerability. You’re allowed one mistake; but of course I do not feel that. I am going back to lose myself in the jungle of Munich. “Dusk, shed by a lamp, brightens the tears.” I lie still and fearless when you enter. I am feeling small, and defeated, at this moment; but it will pass. Damn. Damn my moment of taking my eye off the ball. I will learn from it, and be stronger from it.”

When you go through life alone you are skinless and defenceless

When you go through life alone you are skinless and defenceless, and all and sundry can land blows on you. When you have someone you care for, their love protects you against everything; only they themselves can hurt you then. I have noticed, however, that whenever you split up, or seem about to split up, your enemies re-emerge from the woodwork and full upon you with savage glee, the savage envy of the dunces, like the Russians on Napoleon’s army on the way back from Moscow. The enemies, subdued and cowed by your love for your partner, are just waiting their chance to fall upon you again; like a virus lying dormant in your body, just waiting for the moment when fighting some other virus has left you momentarily weakened and vulnerable. I feel I have an intimate understanding of enemies; I have moved bemused and surprised through their futile attempts to throw themselves at me and destroy me over the years. They did not know who they had taken on. They bit off a bit more than they could chew. They threw themselves at me like Foreman at Ali. Like moths against a lighthouse. And could not understand why their blows just kept bouncing off. They grew increasingly enraged, and increasingly frustrated, and increasingly frenzied, and just smashed themselves to insensibility more and more. Meanwhile, I played them as one must always play one’s enemies: like a piano. I flaunted myself in their faces more and more. I provoked and provoked and provoked. They could not understand the secret source of my Nile; what kept me going. Their jealousy fuelled me. Their electricity brought me to life like Frankenstein’s monster in a most terrible thunder and lightning storm. Nietzsche I think termed it the great separation; only after the great war has been unleashed upon you can then occur the great separation which at last gives you the space you need to achieve great things. But then you fall in love, and one slightly cold response from your beloved can destroy you in a second. It is this your long-forgotten enemies are lying in wait for; this moment to come out of the woodwork, to crawl out of the pond, and fall upon you again, when you are low. I once sat on a park bench in a state of absolutely abject misery while in Australia, Brisbane I believe. I watched a wasp attacking an ant. As the minutes passed by more and more ants came streaming to attack the wasp, until the wasp was completely overwhelmed, subsumed, murdered by these ants, who then proceeded to drag the wasp away with them. I have never forgotten that.